Athletes, coaches adjust to new life with Jones closing

Athletes, coaches adjust to new life with Jones closing

1of3The weight room ﻿is nearly empty ﻿except for ﻿Malcolm Comeaux, who pauses to consider a future without Jones High School in it.Photo: James Nielsen, Staff

2of3Athletic shoes ﻿pile up instead of being put to use by athletes at Jones High School.Photo: James Nielsen, Staff

3of3Junior Cody Hayes-Tyler, who was Jones' starting quarterback last season, is one of several athletes who will have to play next season for another program.Photo: James Nielsen, Staff

The weight room at Jones High School, years ago filled with some of the city's best athletes and months ago filled with hard work, is now an eerie scene.

Few athletes inside. Conversations barely offsetting the sparse clanging of weights. Rust on the equipment.

The practice fields behind the school are empty. The track is, too. The basketball gym has little life, more recreational than instructional.

For many across the state, these last weeks of school involve putting the final touches on spring football, playing out the last few rounds of the baseball and softball postseason or preparing for a 2014-15 athletic season that's less than three months away.

But not here on the south side, a neighborhood that has bled black and gold for decades. Not at Jones.

"It's been real quiet," said Dedreck Carr, the football and boys basketball coach at Jones. "Real quiet."

In February, the 58-year-old campus was among five schools that HISD proposed closing. The district cited low enrollment, demographic shifts and - in the case of Jones - needing the space to temporarily house students from other schools that were being constructed.

Jones, the school, was saved - only Dodson Elementary will close. The high school will become a Futures Academy.

Jones, the athletic program, is dead.

"It was kind of like you lost your best friend," said sophomore Cardell Johnson, a defensive end and receiver for the football team who comes from a family of Jones graduates.

Said junior Cody Hayes-Tyler: "It was hard to hear. Everybody was looking forward to the next year and next season - being here playing for Jones. But then it's like, 'Wow, they're actually going to take away all our sports.' "

In addition to the academy, Jones will house South Early College High School and Milby's top three grades - construction on the new Milby begins later this year, with completion set for 2017. Milby's freshmen will share space at nearby Attucks Middle School. The Buffaloes will practice and could play home games at both sites.

Next destination

Jones students were given the option to apply and enroll at the academy, allowing them the chance to stay. The school will no longer have an attendance zone, so most of the students' new zoned schools are Sterling and Worthing, with Martin Luther King Boulevard becoming the east-west boundary.

"We've been rivals for years - Sterling and Jones - so you can imagine how some of the kids may feel as well as the parents," Sterling football coach Dwayne Colbert said. "It's a slow process, but a steady process moving in the right direction."

Students could transfer to another HISD school that had space or apply to another magnet program, but doing so would mean not being eligible for varsity competition next year. Athletes moving to Sterling and Worthing are immediately eligible.

Twenty-one Jones athletes - including Johnson and Hayes-Tyler, the Falcons' quarterback last season - are zoned for Sterling, 15 to Worthing.

"It's like you have all your family, but then you're going to a new family," said junior Xavier Villarreal, who lives in Yates' attendance zone but will attend the Futures Academy at Jones while playing football for the Lions. "Even though some of us are staying here … when it comes to sports, we're not going to have that bond anymore.

"Instead of us working together, it's going to be us competing against each other."

Coaches in limbo

The announcement also left coaches trying to determine their futures.

Carr, who was asked daily about his plans so players could follow if possible, is returning to Wheatley, a move made official a week ago. He'll be the offensive coordinator, rejoining a staff he was on before coming to Jones in 2010.

One football assistant is still looking for a position. Another is close to retirement and weighing his options. A basketball assistant left teaching altogether, taking a job at an engineering firm.

Karen Waddell, the head coach for volleyball, girls basketball and - until this season - track, is another close to retirement. She's staying at Jones but will help coach at Sterling.

At Jones, coaching has taken a different role in the last months.

"It's been trying to work more on the mental now than being physical in the weight room," Carr said. "Talking to them about just being good citizens, doing the right thing and making the right choices. That type of thing."

Ten years ago, Jones won a basketball state title behind Daniel Gibson, who spent seven seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers. As recent as 2012, the Falcons were district champions and playing Yates in the region finals with a chance to get back to state.

Six of the football team's 13 playoff trips were between 2000-09. That included a 41-22 win over Sharpstown in 2009 for the school's first postseason victory in nearly 25 years.

Alumni include Pro Football Hall of Famer Darrell Green, who won two Super Bowls during a 19-year career with the Washington Redskins, and Alfred Williams, an All-American linebacker at Colorado, led the Buffaloes to a national championship before becoming a first-round pick and winning back-to-back Super Bowls with the Denver Broncos.

Track and field star Latoya Hardy qualified for the state meet three times in the 400 meters, winning the Class 4A title in 2004.

"With any school, if you have good sports programs, then you're going to have spirit in the school," said Waddell, who has been at Jones for 23 years. "Those were the years. When the sports programs were up, the numbers were up."

Attendance a factor

But Jones' numbers are way down. The school's enrollment figure of 473 for the UIL's biennial realignment in February was 65 students fewer than the next smallest HISD school (Kashmere).

Jones turned in 1,342 during the 2002-04 realignment but has decreased ever since.

Sports went away, as did sub-varsity teams for the ones that were left.

Jones didn't field track teams for the first time this year after the number of athletes dwindled. That was also the case with soccer. There hasn't been softball in years. No cross country, golf or tennis.

Baseball was the last sport on campus, but that was done by mid-April.

The Falcons won their final game, however, beating Worthing.

But it's time to move on.

Football players already are spending time with their future teams, heading over for 7-on-7 workouts after getting in their lifting at Jones. It's normal now to see a Sterling or Worthing shirt during athletics.

"It's kind of weird, but hey, it's a new school, and I'm going to do it," said Johnson as he looked down at his 'I am Sterling' shirt. "My whole family went here and graduated from here. I thought I would be able to get the chance to do the same.

"Not wearing the black and gold hasn't really come to mind yet, but I know it's going to be strange."

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